Magic keep promise to hire local companies for arena

When Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and Orlando Magic officials were still campaigning for a new $480 million arena to be built with public money, a big selling point was the local jobs it would create.

That was in July 2007, when unemployment was still 4 percent.

Now as unemployment climbs past 7.7 percent in Metro Orlando amid a worsening recession, those jobs have taken on even greater importance.

It has been seven months since construction started on the Magic's new home court, and I decided to see just how much of the work is being done by local companies.

So far, it looks like the Magic are making good on their promise.

As of now, 126 companies have been awarded 153 contracts. Of those, 98 are companies that have offices in Central Florida, according to a list of contractors provided by the Orlando Magic, the project's developer. Ten companies are from out of state, and one is from outside the United States.

Orlando Magic Chief Operating Officer Alex Martins said that, from the start, the team focused on hiring local companies as well as those owned by women and minorities.

Many of the contractors on the list are based in Central Florida. Some, such as Hunt Construction Group, are based outside of Florida but have a local office.

Hunt, the lead construction company on the project, has its corporate office in Scottsdale, Ariz., but established an office in Orlando in 1999. On the team's master list of contractors, Hunt's address is listed as Orlando.

"We would not be doing justice to those kinds of firms to not characterize them as somewhat local," Martins said. "They do have a strong local and historic tie here."

The tallies will change, however, as three more big bid packages are awarded during the next few months for landscaping, technology and furniture, fixtures and equipment, Martins said.

For certain businesses, such as providers of scoreboards and LED screens, it's likely an out-of-state company will be hired because no local companies specialize in those products, Martins said.

There are about 200 workers at the construction site now, but that is expected to ramp up to as many as 800 when work on the site peaks in a few months.

Even companies with big contracts on the project haven't been immune to the cost-cutting rampant across the construction industry.

Glen Davis, president of Schuff Steel-Atlantic Inc., has let go about 50 people in Orlando since November. His local work force is down to about 100 people.

Just seven miles from the construction site, his company is fabricating 150-ton steel roof trusses for the arena.

"Without this, no telling where all of us would be," he said. Most of his other jobs have either been canceled or put on hold.

"It's pretty slow," she said. "We're trying to get work everywhere and anywhere. For every project, there's so much competition; people are taking work for nothing."

Stone's company represents one of the female-owned companies that the Magic and the city have targeted for work on the project.

As of Jan. 31, $60.5 million in contracts have gone to minority-owned businesses, and $12.8 million have gone to female-owned businesses, according to a city spokeswoman.

That's about 32 percent of the total $226 million in contracts awarded so far, exceeding the goal for a 24 percent minority and women participation rate.

But a flailing economy is canceling out some of the benefits city leaders hoped to see from the program.

Stone, for example, hired some new employees trained through Workforce Central Florida, one of the ways the city and the Magic hoped to build the local work force. She bid on another phase of the arena construction, but that contract went to someone else.

As a result, she had to let some of those newly hired workers go.

"Some of them we weren't able to keep because of the slowdown," she said.